Inspectors deployed to keep recycling 'clean'

Monday

Sep 9, 2013 at 6:00 AMSep 9, 2013 at 10:27 AM

By Brian Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Disposal facilities and transfer stations must be regulated, but when trying to improve recycling, continuing to focus on those businesses is akin to trying to put toothpaste back in the tube, said Steve Changaris, the New England director of the National Solid Wastes Management Association.

Waste management companies are already doing all they can to promote recycling, and with single stream recycling programs, bottles, cans and other items may be cleaned up and returned to market.

But once you start introducing used diapers, food, latex paint and coffee grounds, the wet materials that often get mixed into trash, he said, it's difficult to pull it apart from the recycling stream.

Mr. Changaris said he is pleased that Massachusetts, which for years has had a recycling rate lingering about the 30 percent range, appears to want to put more of a focus on those who generate waste.

Last week, three state inspectors whose only responsibility is to help prevent banned items from entering the waste stream began working for the state Department of Environmental Protection, spokesman Edmund J. Coletta said.

Their role is to help find the offending generator and hauler of the waste-banned item.

After training, the three state workers are expected to start doing inspections on a full-time basis by October, Mr. Coletta said.

Employing the inspectors was a priority of the agency's commissioner.

The waste bans have been in effect since the early 1990s. While staff cuts in the 2000s greatly reduced its ability to enforce the waste ban, the state never abandoned the program, Mr. Coletta said.

Currently, the DEP gets reports from municipal waste incinerators about "failed" loads, such as the load having too much cardboard. As a result, the DEP has made targeted inspections on the offending source.

By year's end, the DEP also expects to move ahead with a proposed requirement for independent inspections at solid waste facilities, such as landfills, incinerators and transfer stations.

The independent inspector would report to the state agency about shipments containing too many recyclables, and thus possibly legal action, Mr. Coletta said.

Since 2009, the DEP has issued more than 130 notices of non-compliance for violations of the waste bans.

But only three to five of those initial violations resulted in fines for repeat offenders, Mr. Coletta said.

Usually, an initial notice of compliance is enough to bring a violator into compliance.

But Mr. Changaris said the increased enforcement won't improve recycling by much.

A more aggressive, DEP inter-governmental approach to the generators of waste and recycling, to get them on the same page, would be more effective, he said.

Waste-management companies are in a difficult situation with regard to recycling, which reverses the-customer-is-always-right mantra.

If a hauler were to object that a customer didn't appear to be recycling, he didn't see a recycling bin and found recyclables in trash, the annoyed customer could fire him.

"Now the next guy (hauler) comes along and doesn't care," Mr. Changaris asserted.

"We build the facilities. We recycle. There are too many people who would want to manage more (recyclables) if they were there," he said.

"The bigger problem," he continued, "is getting the businesses and customers to get to that same place and say, 'We're going to sit down, create space in our building for a recycling program, make one of our employees responsible for it and change the DNA," he said.

At the Southbridge landfill, which is operated by Casella Waste Systems, the new state monitors won't have much of an impact because of the facility's more stringent protocol for identifying banned waste, predicts town landfill monitor Anna Smith.

A town waste spotter, Bob Jones, looks at incoming loads from an observation trailer and identifies those that might have banned material.

If Mr. Jones finds a suspect load, it will be dumped on the landfill face and looked at. The spotter photographs and logs the load, and if there's an issue, a collective decision is made about whether to accept the load, Ms. Smith said.

From there, Casella is required to have two waste spotters who inspect every load and pull out banned material, Ms. Smith said. Casella then assesses a fee and sends the recovered recyclable to a recycler.

Ms. Smith said haulers are getting better: It's been about six months since Southbridge had to reject a load.

Lynne Pledger of Clean Water Action said the new state inspectors will allow the state to look for patterns.

For instance, if a particular company brought a "failed" load every Tuesday, the state inspectors would be able to meet that load, said Ms. Pledger. She and lawyer Staci Rubin from Alternatives for Community & Environment worked with residents and officials in various communities that have regional landfills and incinerators to urge waste-ban enforcement.

"The point is, the company then does something," Ms. Pledger said. "They make a change. It's not just a question of the fine."

Mr. Coletta, the state spokesman, also touted RecyclingWorks in Massachusetts, a new and free recycling assistance program designed to help businesses and institutions improve their recycling, reuse, and composting operations.

The service can help businesses' bottom lines, since they can spend as much as $70 to $80 a ton on getting rid of waste, Mr. Coletta said. Recycling materials involves a much lower per-ton cost, and in some cases the company can make money, depending on whether there's a market for the recyclable material.

In addition, the DEP is presently working on banning food and organic waste from the waste stream from those who generate a ton of food waste per week. The hope is to have the ban in place by July 1, he said.